The contribution of shared leadership in the development of international entrepreneurial orientation

The contribution of shared leadership in

the development of international

entrepreneurial orientation

A single case study of a Chinese SME

MASTER THESIS WITHIN: Business administration NUMBER OF CREDITS: 30

PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Global Management Strategic Entrepreneurship AUTHOR: Sizhu Chen (Global Management)

Lin Xu (Strategic Entrepreneurship)

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Acknowledgement

When doing this research, lots of people helped and contributed to the process.

Firstly, we feel grateful to our tutor, Dr Ziad El-Awad, for his guidance and support for this thesis. From the specific expression of the thesis problem to the writing method of each section. Especially on the theoretical aspect, he gave us many fair and strict comments and suggestions, and detailed guidance with great patience.

Secondly, we sincerely show our appreciation for the case company and all participants. Without their contributions to welcome, time, viewpoints, and active cooperation, it was not possible to complete this research.

Thirdly, we would like to say thanks to the students in our tutoring group, especially the students of the opposite group. The majority of their advice was valuable with a great perspective. Those comments and suggestions helped us refine the thesis more clearly and understandably.

Finally, we are grateful to each other. Because we come from different majors, in this research involving the core of both majors, we all paid a lot for this thesis.

May 2020, Jönköping Sizhu Chen & Lin Xu

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Master Thesis in Business Administration

Title: The contribution of shared leadership in the development of international entrepreneurial orientation – a single case study of a Chinese SME

Author: Sizhu Chen and Lin Xu Tutor: Ziad El-Awad

Date: 2020-05-18

Key terms: Shared leadership, International entrepreneurial orientation, Contribution, Development, Chinses SME

Abstract

Under the background of the competitive and dynamic international market, many enterprises started or intended to develop international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) as a strategic posture. For achieving this kind of orientation, leadership behaviours are necessary and shared leadership is put forward to support enterprises to adapt to the fast-changing global market. Moreover, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an essential type of business enterprises, especially in China. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to study how shared leadership contributes to the development of IEO in a Chinese SME. As a qualitative research, data were collected by interviews and processed by content analysis. The findings of this research are: (1) shared leadership contributes on the establishment of common IEO thinking at the phase of building the IEO awareness; (2) shared leadership plays a role as explicit support and implicit support on implementing IEO; (3) these contributions of shared leadership are mutually reinforcing and complementary, which result in the reinforcement and complementation between the awareness and the implementation of IEO. These findings contribute to the research in the combination of shared leadership and IEO through studying the effects of shared leadership and the process of IEO development. Moreover, this research enriches the study on the field of SMEs and provides guidance for SME leaders who intend to develop IEO.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ... 1

2. Literature review ... 4

2.1 International Entrepreneurial Orientation ... 4

2.1.1 Entrepreneurial Orientation ... 4

2.1.2 Entrepreneurial orientation and internationalization ... 5

2.1.3 Dimensions of (international) entrepreneurial orientation ... 6

2.1.4 International entrepreneurial orientation and international performance in Chinese firms ... 7

2.2 Shared leadership ... 8

2.2.1 Definition of shared leadership ... 8

2.2.2 Antecedents of shared leadership ... 9

2.2.3 Benefits of shared leadership ... 10

2.3 Summary ... 11

3. Methodology ... 12

3.1 Ontological and Epistemological assumptions ... 12

3.2 Research approach: Qualitative Research ... 13

3.3 Research strategy: Case Study ... 14

3.3.1 Outline of the case study ... 14

3.3.2 Case selection ... 15

3.3.3 Case description ... 17

3.4 Data collection ... 18

3.4.1 Primary data and sampling ... 18

3.4.2 Secondary data and the result of its collection ... 22

3.5 Qualitative data analysis: Content Analysis ... 23

3.6 Ethical consideration ... 24

3.7 Validity, reliability and generalizability of the constructionist Design ... 25

4. Findings ... 27

4.1 State of Shared Leadership ... 27

4.1.1 Shared purpose ... 27

4.1.2 Social support ... 29

4.1.3 Voice ... 31

4.2 Influence of shared leadership on developing IEO ... 33

4.2.1 The generation of IEO awareness ... 33

4.2.2 The implementation of IEO ... 35

5. Analysis ... 40

5.1 The contribution of shared leadership on the establishment of the common IEO thinking ... 40

5.2 The contribution of shared leadership on the support for IEO implementation ... 42

5.3 The framework of how shared leadership contributes to developing IEO ... 47

6. Conclusion ... 50

7. Discussion ... 51

7.1 Theoretical implication ... 51

7.2 Managerial implication ... 52

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7.4 Possible future research ... 53

References ... 55

Appendix... 59

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Figures

Figure 1 The distribution of The Unique Chemicals’ product in overseas markets ... 17

Figure 2 The organization structure of The Unique Chemicals ... 18

Figure 3 How shared leadership contribute to developing IEO ... 48

Tables

Table 2 Interview Summary ... 20

Table 3 The Contribution of secondary data ... 23

Table 4 Briefly summary of findings ... 39

Appendix

Appendix 2 Data structure ... 61

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1. Introduction

The purpose of this part is to introduce the background of the research. In this part, the introduction starts with the general information on the research topic and gradually narrows to the purpose and question of the study. Later, the contribution of the study is presented. And the structure of the thesis is the final part of the introduction.

For decades, one of the most popular ideas is internationalization. Internationalization has been regarded as an effective way to bring multiple opportunities for the enterprise to achieve growth and development (Tatyana, 2014). In such circumstances, some scholars come up with international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) as the “internationalization-focuses phenomenon” of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). As the concept derived from EO, IEO mainly focuses on internationalization activities, such as developing a foreign market (Covin & Miller, 2014; Wales, Gupta, Marino & Shirokova, 2019)

The focuses of recent literature about IEO are measurement issues involving IEO, the influence between IEO and culture, and the relationship of IEO and international performance (Covin & Miller, 2014). Moreover, some prior studies have investigated how IEO acts as a mediating role in some aspects. For instance, some scholars demonstrate that IEO plays a mediating role in firms’ international development and performance (Calabrò, Campopiano, Basco & Pukall, 2017). Additionally, Swoboda and Olejnik (2016) indicate that some SMEs are capable of scanning and planning process because of the mediating effect of IEO. Meanwhile, the mediation of other factors on IEO has been mentioned. Among those mediating roles on IEO, leadership is one of the crucial elements. Since leadership plays a role when implying the internationalization process, as Melén (2009) presents that the managers’ knowledge of resources and the potential to use resources differently could affect the development of the firm. In addition, there is a study proving that leadership could promote the successful implementation of strategy, such as entrepreneurial orientation (Engelen, Gupta, Strenger, & Brettel, 2015). Therefore, IEO, as the EO implemented in an international context, could be influenced by leadership. Moreover, under the internationalization context, the corporate would face more complicit situations, thus, leadership would be required to adapt to such changes (Northouse, 2016). In that way, shared leadership, as one of the leadership approaches, could be considered to facilitate the implementation of IEO since shared

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leadership is regarded as one of the appropriate ways to manage the firm under the internationalization context (Wales et al., 2019; Northouse, 2016). Thus, studying shared leadership and IEO is meaningful for the enterprise that wants to become internationalization. However, there is little understanding of the relationship between shared leadership and IEO in existing research. The research on shared leadership illustrates that the internal environment of the firms could impact the development of shared leadership (Carson, Tesluk & Marrone, 2007). And some researchers demonstrate the relationship between team performance and shared leadership (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014). But the research on “how shared leadership as a mediating role in the process of developing IEO” has been ignored in existing research. Moreover, instead of finding the process of IEO’s formation and development in a firm, the current research of IEO is trying to analyse the firms which already have IEO, for example, Swoboda and Olejnik (2016) study the IEO’s influence in SMEs which exist IEO.

Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to understand the contribution of shared leadership on the development of IEO. According to the purpose, the researchers have drawn the research problem of this paper: ‘how shared leadership contributes to the development of IEO?’

To solve this problem there are two sub-questions presented: 1. What is the current state of shared leadership in the company?

2. How do these elements of shared leadership contribute to the IEO developing?

Because the findings of the first sub-question could help people understand the state of shared leadership in the company. With this understanding, it is easy to study the contribution of shared leadership in the process of development of IEO.

To do the further research, the researchers concentrate their attention on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in China. Because China has promulgated several policies to help the company to develop globalization (e.g., the promotion plan, the thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China). Due to those policies, Chinese enterprises are willing to go abroad. In addition, 97% of firms are SMEs in China (OECD, 2016 b). Thus, selecting a Chinese SME as the case to do the research would have referential value for the study of IEO. And considering to shared leadership, the Unique Chemicals (TUC) is selected as a typical case. Since TUC is an SME which starts to develop the international market with shared leadership, using TUC as the case could help

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authors to achieve the research purpose.

The contribution of this study includes two aspects. For the academic study, this research explores the combination of shared leadership and IEO and studies the engagement of shared leadership in the dynamic process of IEO development. Additionally, the focus of the research is not only to find the factors related to shared leadership and the IEO respectively, but also to study the effects of shared leadership and the development process of IEO. Moreover, the research is investigated in a Chinese SME, so this research enriches the content of the research of SMEs. On the other hand, for senior leaders who intend to or have started to promote IEO in their companies, this research could be a reference and detailed guidance about the implementation process.

The remaining sections of the paper are structured as follows. The literature review section shows the theoretical framework of shared leadership and IEO. In this section, the detailed explanation of shared leadership and IEO would be presented. The third part describes the method of this study. At this part, people could know why and how the study conducts qualitative research, and why this study selects TUC as a single case. Then, the section of the finding is presented. In this section, the findings from empirical data would be displayed, including the state of shared leadership and its influence on developing IEO. The fifth part shows the analysis which bases on the literature review and findings chapters. As the result of the analysis, a framework about how shared leadership influences the development of IEO would be drawn. After this part, the paper presents the conclusion which is obtained from the previous chapters. The last part of this paper shows the discussion where theoretical and managerial implications are displayed, as well as some limitations.

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2. Literature review

This literature review aims to reflect the understanding of existing research, identify omitted insight in literature, and explain the research purpose and question for this thesis. The literature review introduces some basic knowledge related to international entrepreneurial orientation and shared leadership. Meanwhile, the correlation between shared leadership and international entrepreneurial orientation is presented to establish a basis for the research question. In the final, the summary shows the identified gaps in the existing knowledge and the question of this research.

2.1 International Entrepreneurial Orientation

International entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) is derived from entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in the context of internationalization, thus understanding entrepreneurial orientation is the basis of this section. After knowing EO, the development and the content of IEO would be easier to understand. Therefore, this part starts with an introduction of EO. And then the relevant concepts of international entrepreneurial orientation would be mentioned.

2.1.1 Entrepreneurial Orientation

Miller (1983) is one of the first scholars who conceptualized entrepreneurial orientation before 30 years. Later, some scholars, like Covin and Slevin (1989), and Lumpkin and Dess (1996), tested his design. They came up with that EO included three dimensions: innovation, proactiveness and risk-taking. An organization cannot be said sufficiently entrepreneurial if it lacks any dimension. Later, Lumpkin and Dess (1996) figure out that EO is the strategic making profile of a firm’s entrepreneurial process. They add competitive aggressive and autonomy in the EO concept as independent behaviour dimensions. Then, Baker and Shinkula (2009) point out that EO shows how firms explore and exploit market opportunities for achieving the growth objective. Now, the time has gone for three decades since the discovery of EO theory, the research on EO continues unabated (Covin & Wales, 2018). In recent research, entrepreneurial orientation is seen as a phenomenon of corporate entrepreneurship in lots of studies (Covin & Miller, 2014), which is useful for the research on entrepreneurial activity (Kuivalainen, Sundqvist & Cadogan, 2010). As has been mentioned at the beginning, scholars represented by Miller (1983) study the EO in three dimensions, while other scholars including Lumpkin and Dess (1996) prefer to study EO in five dimensions. Thus, at present,

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there are two domain views on the construct of EO (Covin & Miller, 2014). Covin and Lumpkin (2011) express that these two perspectives of EO are not two competing views on the same construct but represent different constructs. In this research, both of the two researchers prefer to understand EO in five dimensions. These five dimensions would be introduced after understanding international entrepreneurial orientation.

2.1.2 Entrepreneurial orientation and internationalization

Over time, the research on EO has been more in-depth and has been extended a lot. The research combining EO to internationalization emerged. Some studies show the significance of combining EO to internationalization. The business environment is competitive and dynamic so that internationalization has been a significant strategic component of competitive advantage sustainability and firm growth achievement (Kuivalainen et al., 2010). Moreover, Covin and Miller (2014) indicate that EO is beneficial for firms to facilitate opportunity-seeking behaviours under the internationalization context. Thus, it would be meaningful to investigate EO in an international environment. After reviewing recent literature, there are two perspectives of EO approached in international research: a) some researchers consider the traditional EO structure in the internationalization context (Karami & Tang, 2019) and b) others study international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) as a particular construct (Karami & Tang, 2019).

a) Traditional EO structure in the internalization context

As indicated by Karami and Tang (2019), EO is studied in a particular socio-culture context named “internationally contextualized phenomenon”. Under this perspective, internationally EO is a particular entrepreneurial dimension in the international context, in other words, the conceptualization of EO might be reformulated to include unique characteristics in distinct societies to address vital and singular values in a different culture. For example, ‘industrious’ as a critical entrepreneurial dimension is added to the internationally EO of Turkey. It means that ‘industrious’, as an EO dimension, is only suitable for the Turkish culture, while ‘persistent’ is a particular attribute about EO in India (Gupta & Fernandez, 2009).

b) International entrepreneurial orientation (IEO)

Wales et al. (2019) see IEO as an “internationalization-focused phenomenon”. Covin and Miller (2014) address that EO normally is the basis of international entrepreneurial orientation

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as far as internationalized behaviour and new market entry are concerned. Some scholars describe that new entries in internationalization include the activities for foreign market development, new product/service development in foreign countries, new product-market development and facilitating international business growth (Covin & Miller, 2014; Wales et al., 2019). When EO is placed in the international entrepreneurial context, the implication of those entrepreneurial “dimensions” might be not present meanings or emphasis in the EO theory (Covin & Miller, 2014). For example, in IEO, the emphasis of the dominant design of EO dimensions changes to promote the act of competition, since the aim of IEO is to achieve new entry of the international market and Wales et al. (2019) indicate that IEO could be seen as a “posture-based” phenomenon. In this research, “international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO)” is chosen as one of the theories of the research. The next part would show the five dimensions of both EO and IEO; the similarities and differences would be discussed.

2.1.3 Dimensions of (international) entrepreneurial orientation

Innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, autonomy and competitive aggressiveness are the five dimensions that are generally acknowledged in the field of both EO and IEO.

Innovation is defined as the fundamental element in the concept of entrepreneurship (Wales et al., 2019). Wiklund and Sheherd (2011) address that innovativeness refers to a willingness to create new value or to find new solutions in either the domestic or foreign market. The difference between EO and IEO on innovation is that IEO pays more attention to the new entry within an international market, while EO emphasizes the new idea of product and services (Covin & Wales, 2019). Proactiveness is the second crucial dimension in EO which is defined as the approach of the firm to seize the opportunities in both local and international markets (Covin & Miller, 2014) and shows a forward-looking perspective. It is important to consider whether the entrepreneurial offerings and resources could match with a market opportunity adequately and timely (Blank, 2013). In IEO, proactiveness also is a key point which means the offerings are for taking action in expectation of market growth. This expectation of market growth particularly targets international opportunities exist (Wales et al., 2019). The third dimension of EO and IEO is risk-taking. The aim of considering risk-taking is to measure the cost of achieving innovation and implementing the opportunities (Anderson, Kreiser, Kuratko, Hornsby & Eshima, 2015). However, although it is suffering to take risks in

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terms of some entrepreneurial firms, different degrees of risk are inevitable during international actions (Wales et al., 2019).

The preceding elements of EO and IEO sometimes are discussed on an individual level. It means that these three elements are analysed in terms of individual founding entrepreneurs or teams, and the result is that the individuals are the reason for organization entrepreneurship (Covin & Miller, 2014). For example, Joardar and Wu (2011) believe these three dimensions are at the individual level, and individuals’ traits, values, and orientation are penetrated in the EO and IEO of firms. However, even if innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking could be seen as the elements of EO and IEO at the individual level, organizations are seen as the final entrepreneurial actor conceptually and empirically, or both (Covin & Miller, 2014). Explaining more, innovation, proaction and risk-taking are the behaviours and interactions of entrepreneurs (individual level), but they are finally reflected on the organizational activities (firm-level). The researchers believe, in this paper, that individual-level behaviours constitute EO and IEO as a firm-level construct. For example, the enhancement of innovation at the individual level can eventually lead to innovation improvement in firm-level. Besides the above elements, autonomy and competitive aggressiveness are two commonly additional dimensions of EO and IEO, especially in terms of moving in the new entry.

Autonomy means the way that firms offer support for entrepreneurial action. For new foreign entry, autonomy can be the relevant organizational policies, regulations, and processes which promote foreign market development (Wales et al., 2019). Competitive aggressiveness is the last dimension of EO and IEO as a strategic posture. It is a combative posture (Wales et al., 2019). The aim of competitive aggressiveness is to outperform rivals and competitors of an entrepreneurial firm.

2.1.4 International entrepreneurial orientation and international performance in Chinese firms “EO is not always associated with successful performance” (Karami & Tang, 2019, p106). However, Covin and Miller (2014) have listed more than five researches based on Chinese firms that focus on IEO and firm performance. The numbers of the samples (Chinese firms) in each study are between 100 to 780. The result of all these researches is that there is a strong positive relationship between EO/IEO and various indicators of international performance, at least in Chinese firms (Covin & Miller, 2014). Thus, this paper reasonably believes that in

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China, IEO has a generally positive relationship with international performance as long as the IEO of a firm fits the target new entry, which shows the importance of IEO on the global development of Chinese firms.

2.2 Shared leadership

As mentioned before, IEO could offer new opportunities in the international market (Covin & Miller, 2014), but to achieve such a strategy effectively needs leadership behaviours to support (Engelen et al., 2015). A question that needs to be asked is which leadership could help the company achieve IEO? After researching the literature, this paper suggests that shared leadership could be the appropriate approach for facilitating the IEO’s development. The researchers would illustrate the reason from three aspects as follow.

2.2.1 Definition of shared leadership

The study of shared leadership has renewed with the changing of the world. Pearce and Conger (2003) state that shared leadership is a dynamic process, which means leadership influence interacts among individuals within the group or organization. Moreover, they suggest that leadership function could also be shared to lead the individuals to the achievement of group or organizational goals (Pearce & Conger, 2003). On this basis, some scholars describe shared leadership as a mutually influenced process, which is built with two or more members (Morgeson, DeRue, & Karam, 2010). Additionally, Morgeson et al. (2010) point out that the hierarchical authority is not the only authority structure in work teams. It means that the individuals could selectively take different leadership roles to meet the task needs (Aime, Humphrey, Derue & Paul, 2014). Carson et al. (2007) state that shared leadership should involve more members in the leadership process, since individuals from different groups in the organization and multiple levels of the hierarchy could offer different perspectives on leadership functioning. Therefore, shared leadership could be identified as a multilevel construct embedded in organizational structures. Furthermore, some scholars suggest that characteristic of shared leadership is that decisions and responsibilities are collaborative and shared among engaged members rather than focused on a single designated leader (Hoch & Dulebohn, 2013; Wang, Waldman & Zhang, 2014).

Moreover, the characteristic of shared leadership makes it advantageous under internationalization. In the context of globalized markets, where it is fast-changing and

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sophisticated, the company with traditional model leadership (e.g., singular leadership) is required to make some adjustments. (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014; Northouse, 2016). In that way, shared leadership as one leadership approach is suggested against the international background (Hoch & Dulebohn, 2013). On the one hand, the formal leader in the traditional model does not own sufficient and relevant information to make highly effective decisions. While shared leadership allows senior leaders to engage lower-level managers who may have complementary knowledge that contributes to more effective decisions (Northouse, 2016), which means when facing the complicated international market, depending on the expertise of others the senior leader could make the highly effective decisions. It is important in the context of globalization because the senior leaders would involve the lower-level managers who know internationalization in decision making. So that shared leadership could lead the company to a higher degree of internationalization (Melén, 2009). On the other hand, in the traditional model, the decision-making process needs to pass the decision to the top and wait for permission from the top. However, the fast-paced environment requires the companies to respond swiftly for the changing trends. In such a situation, the organizations could not wait for leadership decisions to transmit to every staff from top to bottom. Instead, shared leadership across the organization could ensure a speedy response, since shared leadership empowers decision-making authority from top management to the front-line staff who best understand the work (Pearce & Conger, 2003).

Therefore, shared leadership could be the appropriate leadership under the internationalized environment. Because it could help the company to meet the challenge of the fast-changing and complex international markets, and it could ensure that the individuals who engage in shared leadership would cooperatively make effective decisions to achieve the organizational goal.

2.2.2 Antecedents of shared leadership

Carson et al. (2007) come up with some antecedents of shared leadership. They illustrate that some factors could impact the development of shared leadership, which often relate to the internal environment of the teams.

According to Carson et al. (2007), there are three dimensions of an internal environment. The first dimension is the shared purpose. As Northouse (2016) mentions, the group is composed

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of members who share common goals, and who must work collectively to accomplish their shared goals. To achieve the shared purpose, the group members should have the same understanding of the group goals, and they should take some actions or make some stipulations to ensure that all the group members are focused on the collective goals. The second dimension is social support. Social support means that the team members provide psychological and emotional support to each other (Carson et al., 2007). Northouse (2016) states that teams will have great difficulty when they lack the support of collaborative work and decision making. Therefore, it is essential to show social support. For group members, they could provide emotional and psychological support to one another through showing encouragement, and they could also show social support by identifying other’s individual contributions (Carson et al., 2007). The third dimension is the voice which connotes participation and input (Carson et al., 2007). The authors define it here as the degree to which a group member has input into the work process. And it could be regarded as the group members are able to take on the leadership roles (Wang et al., 2014).

2.2.3 Benefits of shared leadership

In a 2014 study, Hoch and Kozlowski state that shared leadership could create stronger bonds among the group members because shared leadership could facilitate group members’ trust, cohesion, and commitment. Following the measurement of 565 team members and team leaders on 101 research and development (R & D) teams from global manufacturing industries, the study gives the result that shared leadership is significantly related to team performance (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014). Nevertheless, the study of Hoch and Kozlowski (2014) is limited in studying how shared leadership as input factors contributes to team performance. It lacks the insight of mediating mechanisms, in other words, this study uses a static approach to observe the consequences of shared leadership rather than identifying the mediating process of shared leadership (Drescher, Audrey, Welpe, Picot, & Wigand, 2014). The research of Drescher et al. (2014) pays attention to the dynamics of shared leadership, in this insight, the argument of shared leadership and performance is still verified. Their research shows that there is a positive correlation between shared leadership and performance, and this relationship is facilitated by a positive change in trusting behaviour within the group (Drescher et al., 2014). Meanwhile, Muethel and Hoegl (2013) state that shared could offer members enough autonomy. Moreover, some researchers indicate that sharing leadership among

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members could foster greater team creativity (Aime et al., 2013). Besides, shared leadership shows a stronger relationship with team effectiveness, especially when the context is more knowledge-based and interdependent (Wang et al., 2014).

2.3 Summary

After reviewing the articles of shared leadership and IEO, the authors found that shared leadership could play a mediating role in the development of IEO. However, few scholars have put these two together to discuss. In the context of internationalization, people have noticed that shared leadership and IEO could influence the degree of the company’s globalization. It is worthy of exploring the combination of shared leadership and IEO under the internationalization context.

As mentioned above, the scholars found that both IEO and shared leadership have a positive impact on performance. However, most of them pay more attention to how the input factors of IEO and shared leadership contribute to the performance. Thus, it would be significant to figure out how such mediating mechanisms link the input factors with outcomes.

Base on those two points, this paper aims to combine shared leadership and IEO under the circumstance of globalization. And in order to explore the effect of mediating mechanisms, this paper selects shared leadership as a mediating role in the development of IEO.

Hence, the researchers raise the research question: how shared leadership contributes to the development of IEO?

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3. Methodology

This chapter introduces an overview of the research methodology. The aim is to show how research is structured scientifically. This chapter first explains the assumption of the research philosophy position. Later, the selection of research approach, research strategy, methods of data collection, and data analysis are presented orderly. Finally, ethical considerations, validity, reliability, and generalizability of the research are evaluated and shown.

3.1 Ontological and Epistemological assumptions

A failure consideration of philosophy always negatively influences the result and quality of research, especially in the field of management and business. Therefore, identifying the right research philosophy is vital for research. And it is useful for researchers to have a clear logic of research design and do a self-reflection by analysing those philosophical thoughts (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Ontology is always seen as the starting point of philosophical argument. It refers to the nature of reality. And then the assumption of epistemology is to find the most appropriate way to research for the nature of reality (Gioia, Corley & Hamilton, 2013).

In this thesis, relativism and constructionism are chosen as its ontology and epistemology. Relativism is to define some perspectives on an issue (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Different people have different experiences when dealing with the same problem, which leads to different viewpoints from different observers. Thus, there is no single standard reality, but many perspectives and common aspects can be discovered (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). In terms of epistemology, the core of constructionism is building nature of reality on individuals’ thinking and feeling. Therefore, constructionism assumes that the multiple perspectives on an issue can be collected according to the viewpoints and experiences of different observers. Going back to the thesis, the purpose is to understand the contribution of shared leadership in developing international entrepreneurial orientation. The issue is exploring a new global entry with a kind of strategic posture of IEO by using shared leadership. In this context, individuals in different positions have different experiences and understandings of shared leadership and the development of IEO. This assumption is consistent with the assumption of relativist ontology. Then according to the ontological assumption, the goals of this research are to collect and analyse these perspectives and feelings from different relevant observers and

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to understand how shared leadership contributes to developing a firm’s IEO. Therefore, the epistemological assumption should be interpretive research because it is evident that there is no “single standard” or “single truth” that can be defined as a conclusion like positivist epistemology (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018).

3.2 Research approach: Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is the approach used in this thesis. Hammerslex (2013) indicates three methodological philosophies of qualitative research: interpretivism, critical research, and constructionism. Therefore, choosing qualitative research as the approach of research design keeps consistency with the methodological assumptions that have been mentioned above. Bluhm, Harman, Lee and Mitchell (2011) claim that the unique ability of the qualitative approach is describing, interpreting and explaining issues. Further, qualitative research is significant for exposing and understanding the processes at the individual level, team level, and organizational level. Moreover, qualitative research is vital for gathering and analysing individuals’ experiences from their interpretation (Bluhm et al., 2011).

Matching these theories with the topic of this thesis “understanding the contribution of shared leadership in the development of IEO”, description and explanation are both important for the in-depth research. The evidence of the study is the experiences and interpretations of participants. These participants are individuals who participate in the development of IEO and concurrently engage in shared leadership. And such evidence is the basis of revealing and understanding how shared leadership influences the development of IEO. Therefore, qualitative research is the most appropriate approach for this research.

Moreover, there are three types of reasoning for qualitative research: inductive, deductive and abductive (Tracy, 2020). In this research, abductive research reasoning is chosen as the reasoning approach. At the beginning of the research, a question has been come up with based on the purpose: how shared leadership contributes to the development of IEO. Then, following prior theoretical knowledge of what the researchers obtained from study and literature, two sub-questions were come up with and answered. Firstly, the current state of shared leadership in this company was identified and figured out, and then, the connection of shared leadership and IEO was found. Moreover, in abductive research, the meanings are generated from the field according to the description of the participant’s views in a specific context (Tracy, 2020).

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Therefore, a field investigation was organized to gather the story of participants, then the detailed information about the contribution of shared leadership when developing IEO became clear gradually with the implementation of research. After investigating, the empirical data from real-life was categorized based on theories. The theories are the study of 5 dimensions of IEO (e.g., Wales et al., 2019) and the study of antecedents of shared leadership (Carson et al., 2007). Finally, after analysis, the research question was answered by making a theoretical framework based on data analysis, which is a general conceptualized pattern that emerges to discuss the observed interactions (Tracy, 2020).

3.3 Research strategy: Case Study

3.3.1 Outline of the case study

Unlike quantitative research that is studied by large samples, qualitative research is usually investigated in a small number of cases for doing in-depth analyses because the object of study is complex (Hammerslex, 2013). Thus, case study is chosen as the research method of this thesis to do the in-depth study. There are two types of case study design: single case study and multiple case study (Yin, 2012). In this research, single case study is the most appropriate method. To figure out the influence of shared leadership during the development of IEO, the researchers need to do in-depth research in the organization to analyse detailed information on relevant actors’ experiences and thoughts. Therefore, a company is chosen as an organization to study the specific phenomenon and to present a holistic picture of how shared leadership contributes to the development of IEO.

Although the multiple-case study is useful in improving confidence in findings, it is more difficult than single case study to generate detailed information and to make each IEO development clear with the same amount of time. Barratt, Choi and Li (2011) figure out that fewer case number means better opportunity for in-depth observation. Therefore, single case study provides plenty of time for this study to unroll the process and relevant details.

Moreover, in this research, the case study is exploratory and explanatory. As an exploratory case study, field investigation and data collection are required before research issues, and methodological procedures are finalized (Yin, 2012). Then based on the collected data, the researchers analyse the relationship between different variables (Gerring, 2017). Thus, the relationship between shared leadership and IEO development is explored after collecting

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relevant information from participants. On the other hand, the explanatory case study is more suitable for answering “how” and “why” questions (Yin, 2012). In this research, for exploring the contribution of shared leadership in the development of a firm’s IEO, “how shared leadership are applied in the firm” should be explained first and then “how shared leadership contributes when developing IEO” could be answered. Therefore, both explanatory theory and exploratory theory are reflected in our research.

3.3.2 Case selection

An appropriate case is the foundation of a single case study. Therefore, researchers put forward two criteria for getting a proper case.

Criterion 1: The case should be a typical one for the phenomena in an empirical context. The

way to implement IEO and how shared leadership is applied might be different in a different context. Thus, the case should be worth learning for organizations with a similar background. Following the given criterion, researchers decided to choose a Chinese chemical small and medium-sized enterprise (SME, table 1) as the case. There are three reasons for choosing this company under this criterion. Firstly, internationalization is important for the growth of the Chinese economy. The export sector grew so rapidly that it has contributed to the Chinese economy as a key factor (Yan, Wickramasekera & Tan, 2018).

Table 1 Definition of SMEs in the Chinese manufacturing industry

Source: Adapted from OECD (2016 a).

Secondly, China has a positive context for promoting internationalization. After the economic reformation in China, the Chinese government has promulgated a number of policies to encourage the development of Chinese economic globalization, especially in terms of the development of SMEs. For example, the promotion plan (2016-2020) for SMEs development was issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. This plan was

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made under the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and the Outline of the thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China (Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, 2016). This plan aims to facilitate the development of SMEs based on those basic policies. One of the main tasks is “to promote SMEs to expand the breadth and depth of foreign trade and investment, and to integrate themselves into the global industrial chain and global value chain” (Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, 2016).

However, although many Chinese SMEs are going out, it is not all, “millions of Chinese SMEs have not yet entered the international market” (Yan et al., 2018, p633). Thus, researchers believe that using a Chinese SME as a case could let more other Chinese firms intending to go global learn from the case entirely or partly based on the real situation. For example, at least, the study of TUC will give enlighten to other Chinese chemical SMEs on the leadership use of IEO implementation.

Criterion 2: The organization chosen in this research should be a typical case that is

implementing IEO by shared leadership in some way.

In terms of SMEs, they are the mainstay of the Chinese economy after the economic reformation in China (Statista, 2019). In 2016, SMEs occupied 97% of all Chinese firms and 60% of all total GDP in China (OECD, 2016 b) and the number of SMEs was over 38 million in 2019 (Statista, 2019). It is clear that “SMEs” is the typical type of Chinese firms.

One of the researchers was fortunate to have an internship at The Unique Chemicals (TUC) which is an SME in the Chinese chemical industry. In this researcher’s memory, the company is on the road of internationalization with shared leadership. Therefore, the researcher made an appointment with the general manager of TUC (the researcher’s relative) to confirm that TUC now is indeed applying shared leadership in some way when implementing IEO. With the development of the firm, the situation of the company has changed. Thus, to get current information on how shared leadership influences the development of IEO in TUC, the researcher asked for and got permission and support from the general manager to do a relevant detailed investigation in the company.

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3.3.3 Case description

As an SME of the Chinese manufacturing industry, TUC has employees more than 70 and its operating income was around 18m Chinese yuan (CNY) in 2019. Moreover, the general manager also told the researcher that the operating income of TUC was planned to grow to 30m CNY at least in 2020, which could promote the company shift from small to medium size.

TUC was registered in March 2015. Since the start of TUC, going global has been its ultimate goal. Therefore, during enterprise development, internationalization was always one of the core considerations. It means that IEO has existed at the beginning of TUC’s development and influenced TUC’s decision-making during its life. Until now, TUC’s product has been exported to five countries: South Korea, Vietnam, Dubai, Australia and Canada (Figure 1). Figure 1 The distribution of The Unique Chemicals’ product in overseas markets

Source: Authors’ own figure.

Moreover, to adapt the international development as a young enterprise, the organizational structure of TUC is simpler than the larger companies with a long history (Figure 2). This kind of structure provides the basis for the contribution of shared leadership when developing IEO.

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Figure 2 The organization structure of The Unique Chemicals

Source: Authors’ own figure

Data resource: data of case description is made by authors and from secondary data collection and the appointment and interview with the general manager.

3.4 Data collection

3.4.1 Primary data and sampling

The primary data of this research is collected through qualitative interviews. The definition of a qualitative interview is conversations for a purpose based on several questions and answers (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018; Tracy, 2020). There are three types of qualitative interviews: structured interviews, unstructured interviews, and semi-structured interviews. Considering this thesis, the unstructured interview is not suitable. Because both researchers are students that lack experience in doing the interview, if doing the unstructured interview, participants might talk about unrelated matters, which is time-wasting and makes researchers confused. In addition, structured interview is not a good choice for this research, either. This research is designed for a single case study, so strictly structured interviews cannot meet the requirement of exploration. Therefore, the semi-structured interview is the ultimate choice as the method

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of collecting primary data. Because it not only can give interviewees the freedom to speak more but also can be within boundaries set by researchers.

As a semi-structured interview, there is an interview guide prepared before the interview (Tracy, 2020). It includes several loose-structured bullet points and questions. According to the purpose, besides the backgrounds of the firm and interviewees, some themes and open-ended questions are written down to generate more interview questions that focus on how shared leadership was applied when developing IEO and how shared leadership contributes to IEO implementation (Appendix 1). Because different interviewees work in different positions, these questions were selected to ask. It means that the questions which are not suitable for particular interviewees were not asked. For instance, because TUC’s IEO was set when the company was built, the question “when did you have an idea and decide to do a foreign development and why?” was only asked for three founders. On the other hand, for different interviewees, the focus of the interview is also different, because they are in different positions. For example, when asking “could you please use one or two foreign businesses as cases to show how you worked for foreign business development?”, the foreign trade manager was asked from a sales perspective, but the production manager was asked from a production perspective. When the foreign trade manager answered the question, the cases were described from doing market research to finishing the orders. Yet, the production manager answered the question based on a production perspective from the start of the communication with the sales department to the end of production of orders. When they talked about their work in this way, people and departments that contributed to or influenced their work were mentioned. Through describing how they work together for the development of international markets, some information about shared leadership and IEO were identified and figured out. Besides the questions on the interview guide, there were some new questions generated and asked based on what interviewees said. The aim was to guide interviewees to speak more relevant and valuable information.

A sampling plan suggests to specifically choose sources for data in a proper way (Tracy, 2020). Barratt et al. (2011) show that unlike quantitative sampling which is statistical and from the defined population, a theoretical or biased sampling approach is designed for case study research. In order to find the right interviewees, snowball sampling is chosen as the sampling design method. The sampling begins with several suitable participants and finds other potential

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participants from appropriate participants’ suggestions and information (Tracy, 2020). Back to this research, “the people who participate in the process of IEO development” is seen as the group for studying the application of shared leadership, including both top managers and relevant staff. The appropriate participants are the people who play a role in developing IEO and who are influenced by shared leadership. The first interviewee is one of the founders of TUC and participating in company affairs as the general manager. Because he is the person who has the most say in how shared leadership is used and plays a role in developing IEO. During the interview with him, some key people were put forward like foreign trade manager and production manager. Then, those key people were invited and scheduled for interviews. After that, new people who participated in the development of IEO and influenced by shared leadership were mentioned again from interviewees, so researchers could make appointments with them to collect necessary data from different perspectives. Finally, nine key persons were founded and accepted researchers’ invitation to do the interview, and all interviews took more than 10 hours in total. Table 2 below shows the interview summary which includes the information of Interviewees, interview topics and the duration of each interview.

Table 2 Interview Summary

Interview Summary

Date Interviewees Position Topic Duration of _interview

2020/3/17 A

General manager; Founder

Understanding of IEO; the process of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the

process of IEO 2 hours 30 minutes 2020/3/18 B Vice general manager; Production manager; Founder

Understanding of IEO; the process of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the process of IEO, especially

on manufacturing perspective 1 hour 20 minutes 2020/3/18 C Vice general manager; Purchasing

Understanding of IEO; the process of IEO; understanding of shared

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manager; Founder

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the process of IEO, especially on purchasing perspective

2020/3/18 D

Foreign trade manager

Understanding of IEO; the process of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the

process of IEO 1 hour 30 minutes 2020/3/19 E Manager of research and development (R&D) Understanding of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the process of IEO, especially on technologic perspective 1 hour 2020/3/20 F Financial manager Understanding of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the process of IEO, especially on the financial perspective

50 minutes

2020/3/20 G Warehouse

manager

Understanding of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the process of IEO, especially on warehouse perspective 50 minutes 2020/3/21 H Human resource (HR) manager Understanding of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the process of IEO, especially

on HR perspective 1 hour 2020/3/21 I Manager of environment and safety Understanding of IEO; understanding of shared

leadership; how to use shared leadership in the process of IEO, especially on environment and safety

perspective

30 minutes

Total interview time 10 hours 10

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Because researchers are in Sweden but the interviewees are in China, the way of doing interviews is remote interviewing, which means the interviews are mediated via video chat. The limitation of the remote interview is the lack of immediate contextualization and interaction of face-to-face (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Therefore, WeChat (i.e., a Chinese communication application) is designated as the interview tool for this study. Like Skype, it has the function of implementing one-on-one or one-to-many video interviews. By this way, it can minimize the limitation of the remote interviews. On the other hand, all Chinese are familiar with WeChat, so using WeChat can help interviewees feel more relaxed during the interview. Moreover, all interviews are organized by two researchers rather than assigned to a single researcher. Because the two researchers of this thesis are from different study areas (one is from global management, another is from strategic entrepreneurship), organizing interviews together is beneficial to supplement knowledge with each other and make data more comprehensively.

3.4.2 Secondary data and the result of its collection

Secondary data is the information that already exists, which researchers collect to complement primary data (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Yin (2012) also said that a good case study always includes multiple sources of evidence. In this research, the product brochure for foreign markets and corporate brochures was collected to know the detailed information about the export situation of TUC and the TUC company itself. Moreover, viewing TUC’s official website is another way to gather information about the company and its history. All secondary materials were useful to supply an overall impression of TUC company, to save interview time for general information and to inspire interview questions. Knowing this information before doing the interview is useful for researchers to understand how shared leadership is used between different individuals in positions when developing IEO in TUC efficiently. Table 3 presents the contribution of secondary data.

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Table 3 The Contribution of secondary data

The Contribution of Secondary data

Resource of Secondary data Purpose Contribution

Corporate brochure (from foreign trade

manager)

To understand the structure of the organization

Easy to understand the relationship between

departments Product brochure

(from foreign trade manager)

To understand the structure of products

Figure out the business for foreign market; helpful to

generate interview guide

Official website of TUC

To understand the history and current situation of TUC company; to get more

detailed information about the export product

Understand the overall impression of TUC; figure

out some of the potential interviewees; useful to generate interview guide; save time to inquiry general information of the company

3.5 Qualitative data analysis: Content Analysis

In this research, the analysis approach of qualitative data is content analysis (Appendix 2: data structure (a)). For doing a content analysis, qualitative data will be analysed in a systematic way (Mackey & Gass, 2012), which begins from a set of ideas which are structured beforehand and are researched from qualitative data collection (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). This research is related to the development of IEO in the firm and how shared leadership influences this development. As has mentioned, the research question would be answered by responding to the two sub-questions. Thus, the state of shared leadership was found firstly by searching for and coding the relevant activities of shared leadership. These activities stemmed from the field information of participants’ descriptions and presented the elements of shared leadership. After figuring those activities out, those activities were categorized based on the theory about antecedents of shared leadership. As a result, three main categories and seven subcategories were put forward (Appendix 2: data structure (b)).

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At the end of the above steps, the activities of shared leadership have been found and categorized, and the first question have been answered. For answering the second sub-question, the next task is to classify these activities according to their contribution to IEO. First, the contribution of shared leadership is categorized into the five dimensions of IEO to see the connection between the activities and IEO. Through gathering the content, it was clear that how IEO dimensions were influenced, and those dimensions could be categorized under two phases of IEO developing. In other words, the five dimensions of IEO were categorized under the two categories of IEO development phases (Table 4 in the finding section).

Through these two tasks, it is clear that what, who, how, where, and when of applying shared leadership during the process of developing IEO. Therefore, besides analysing the content step by step, after the coding and classification processes, “how shared leadership contribute to IEO” could be analysed from a holistic and interactive perspective.

3.6 Ethical consideration

Several ethical issues might occur in the process of investigation. If those ethical issues happen, it might damage the interests of participants and organizations, and also, the integrity of the research community might break down (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Therefore, considering the ethics of research is significant to conduct a meaningful study. Bell and Bryman’s (2007) ten principles in research ethics and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are applied in this research.

According to those principles and GDPR, all interviewees were informed about the purpose of the interview and their rights under GDPR at the time of invitation. In appendix 3, the template of the consent form and participant information sheet could be found. When the researchers talked about information disclosure right with interviewees, all of the respondents allowed the researchers to disclose their job title because it is important for the study, but some of them were unwilling to expose personal information such as name, gender, age, etc. Because of this, the researchers decided to use letters to stand for these interviewees (e.g., general manager A). Moreover, the researchers thought if using the real name of the company, it is easy to track participants’ information according to the name of the company and participants’ job position. So, finally, the researchers decided to use “The Unique Chemicals” as a nickname of the company. By doing so, the interviewees’ information can be protected

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when using their job information and the potential harms to interviewees are avoided. Additionally, to ensure research accuracy and avoid the bias of research results, all investigation evidence and necessary communications are strictly around the research topic, and the research results are also from the classification and sorting of data.

3.7 Validity, reliability and generalizability of the constructionist Design

The quality of qualitative research is reflected in the validity, reliability, and generalizability of research (Tracy, 2020). In terms of a constructionist design, validity can be answered by whether enough perspectives are included in the research (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Moreover, researchers’ background, individual opinion, and subjective biases sometimes influence their analysis of data, so-called “self-reflexivity” which can influence the validity of the conclusion (Hammersley, 2013). Therefore, more different perspectives investigated are useful to develop facts by systematically evaluated (Tracy, 2020). In this research, there are nine perspectives from the top manager and relevant staff investigated. All participants showed their experiences and understandings about implementing IEO with shared leadership. In this way, the development of IEO and the contribution of shared leadership could be explained more comprehensively. Moreover, because both of the two researchers are involved in the collection and analysis of all kinds of data, the knowledge of different researchers can complement each other.

Reliability is reflected in the precise replication of the research conduction and result (Tracy, 2020), which means that other observers also can get similar observations (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). This is an essential quality of research. The two researchers also kept it in mind when they searched for the case. Therefore, after clarifying all the conditions that the selected case had to meet, the researchers preferentially chose a manufacturing company that produced physical products. Because compared to the companies producing various intellectual products, the organizational structure of Chinese SME that provide physical products is relatively fixed. Additionally, in the chemical industry, the Chinese government has more stringent requirements on the control of the production and export of products, so the structure of chemical SMEs is more similar, especially those producing products with the same nature. Therefore, it is easier to conduct similar research and get a similar result in other companies which accord with research criteria.

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Generalizability refers to translating the findings to other contexts (Tracy, 2020). TUC is a typical Chinese SMEs producing physical products, which owns the awareness of IEO and looks for the way to achieve the development of IEO. As has mentioned, the organizational structure of SMEs that produce physical products is more fixed than the structure of SMEs producing intangible products. Moreover, SMEs are the main component of Chinese business enterprises. Therefore, TUC’s consideration of developing new entry and the application of leadership at least can be used in all Chinese chemical SMEs even the whole manufacturing industry where companies sell physical products.

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4. Findings

This section includes two parts. In the first part, the researchers classify the data into three categories: shared purpose, social support, and voice. This part aims to report thecurrent state of shared leadership in The Unique Chemical (TUC). In the second part, the researchers present how these shared leadership elements influence IEO in five dimensions: innovation, competitiveness aggressive, risk-taking, proactiveness, and autonomy. Moreover, this part demonstrates the impacts of shared leadership through two phases. Overall, this chapter contributes to a deep understanding of the state of shared leadership and the influence of shared leadership on IEO developing.

4.1 State of Shared Leadership

The current state of shared leadership in TUC could be illustrated from three dimensions: shared purpose, social support, and voice.

4.1.1 Shared purpose

For a company that wants to build shared leadership, the first thing it needs to do is having shared purpose, which means group members have similar understandings of the main purpose of the group and take actions to ensure members concentrate on common goals (Carson et al., 2007). In TUC case, the company firstly set a common goal. After having a common goal, the company took some actions to ensure the attainment of the common goal. Based on this, the empirical work has delineated two sub-categories: setting a common goal and achieving the common goal.

Setting a common goal

Setting a common goal as the beginning of developing shared leadership, it assures that members develop a common understanding of the overall direction of the firm. In TUC, the company first had an overall common goal which was to develop international marketing. As one of the founders in the company, general manager A believed that the overall goal should be clear and simple to convey. Hence, he passed the common goals to others in one sentence: “expanding further into international markets to reduce the competitive risk both in the domestic and foreign market.”

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To ensure everyone could understand the common goal entirely, the company described the overall common goal more detailed from four aspects: the reason for developing the international market, thecontent should be argued in a regular meeting, the requirement of real-time communication and the priority of processing overseas orders.

First of all, people need to understand the reason for setting this common goal. General manager A presented his analysis of the status of the industry as the explanation: “It is time for us to develop international markets, because of the development of internationalization in the world, the product from other countries will come into China as well. Moreover, the number of local producers in China will be increasing meanwhile. On the other hand, in other countries, there also are more and more local producers. As a result, both the competition at home and abroad will intensify.” And to guarantee that all members are aligned with the common goal, top managers asked people to report the process of developing foreign market at the regular meeting, members should account the whole context of internationalization (i.e., the development status of entering the overseas market). And they should give more explanation of the specific situation (i.e., each overseas order). Meanwhile, to avoid some potential issues that could be barriers to the common goal, the company required people who engaged in foreign developing strategy communicate with each other in time when they ran into problems. Moreover, to ensure the common goal could be achieved, the participators were asked to prioritize work involving overseas orders.

With that general and detailed interpretation of the common goal, all interviewees from different departments who are involved in the globalization strategy show that they have a clear understanding of developing the international market as the common goal.

Achieving the common goal

Besides setting the common goal, interviewees showed how they worked collectively to achieve the common goal in their position.

For the top leader, people play a coordinating role during the implementation. General manager A always coordinated and helped members who had cooperation problems with other colleagues. Manager A gave an example to illustrate: “once the HR department and R&D department had a disagreement over the recruiters, this was the time for me to adjust the conflict. I needed to make sure that their final option was consistent with our common goal.”

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For other managers, they showed their consensus on the priority of processing overseas orders. For example, production manager B said that if foreign trade manager D signed a contract with a short production deadline, the production priority would be given to overseas products. Because compared with the international market, domestic orders are more regular and flexible. Therefore, in production, manager B would coordinate internally first to ensure that the products could be completed on time.

Moreover, financial manager F showed the priority by quickly approving advertising fee on the oversea promotion and simplifying the process of reimbursement relating to international business. As financial manager F said: “When it comes to the reimbursement of an overseas business, I will allow approval to be reached verbally. In the regular procedure, the applicant needs to submit a written application first.” To achieve the goal of entering overseas markets, manager F also found a relevant service company to help the company familiar with the process.

4.1.2 Social support

Social support is another key to offer the environment for shared leadership development. Social support means that people support one another through providing emotional and psychological strength, such as encouraging and recognizing others’ activities (Carson et al., 2007). In TUC, the members presented their social support by showing trust and support to others and showing appreciation to others. Based on this, the data has delineated two sub-categories: showing trust and support, and appreciating to others’ work.

Showing trust and support

As expresses way of emotional and psychological strength, trust and support could encourage people to input more in the work process. In TUC, general manager A is the person who always offers support to others. For example, manager A would like to support others in making decisions. Manager A always encouraged those who have no confidence to make their own decisions, and he would like to share his experience and advice when necessary. Once the other person has made the decision, he usually supported people’s decisions. Other participants proved his account during the interview. Many of them mentioned that such support resulted in mutual trust among members, especially when it came to the professional area.